Bleeding Kansas (32 page)

Scarlet with shame, Lara sat up. “Robbie? Robbie, it's me.”

He stared at her in disbelief, not recognizing her in Chip's fatigues and with straw in her hair.

“It's Lara Grellier. Don't be mad at me, Robbie.”

I
N SOMEWHAT MULISH
compliance with an order from Jim, Lara was on hand to greet her mother when Susan came home from the hospital on Saturday afternoon. She put her arms around Susan, trying not to flinch from her mother's drawn face and dull eyes, and pecked her cheek, muttering, “Welcome home, Mom.”

“Yes, it's good to come home,” Susan said stiffly, in the formal tones of a foreigner practicing English.

The doctor had told Jim not to be surprised if Susan was nervous for the first few days: she'd been living in a sheltered environment, so the outside world was bound to seem frightening at first.

“Try to behave as normally as you can around her, even though I know you're worried about how she may react. She truly is stronger than she was when she arrived. Going to a grief support group with other parents whose children died has been a help to her.” The doctor looked at Jim's tight-drawn face. “It might be a help for you, too: the next meeting is Wednesday evening.”

Jim nodded, but he was too nervous to pay much attention to the doctor's words, only thanking her with a mechanical courtesy, before going with the nurse and the orderly to help Susan pack up her things. Besides the small suitcase Jim had brought in when she was admitted, Susan had a shopping bag of medications, along with a list of emergency phone numbers for support staff, and a six-month calendar of appointments for group therapy, the grief group, and private therapy.

The social worker who met with the Grelliers before they left stressed the importance of Susan's attending all these sessions. Jim tried not to see dollar signs when he looked at the schedule. Nothing was more important than Susan's health, after all.

When they got home and Lara had greeted Susan, Jim asked about lunch.

“I waited for you two, even though I'm
starving,
” Lara announced, gamely trying to keep up the pretense of a happy family gathering. “We had band practice this morning and then basketball, and I'm hungry enough to swallow an alligator stuffed with goat. Where do you want to eat? Kitchen or dining room?”

“I'm not hungry,” Susan said. “Just very tired. I'll go up and lie down.”

“Suze, you need to eat something.” Jim tried to keep a note of panic from his voice. “Lulu will bring lunch into the family room, where you can be cozy on the couch.”

He nodded at his daughter, who made a face, but busied herself with making up the kind of tray they created in 4-H, everything attractively laid out for an invalid.

Rachel Carmody and a few of the other women from Riverside United Church had come out to help clean this morning. They'd also brought food for the family. Rachel's dish was the best, an eggplant lasagna with a romaine salad, so Lara chose that, eating a large spoonful of noodles out of the pan while she fixed the plates.

She was arranging a flower display, using foam core and wires so it would be truly artistic, when a van from Global Entertainment Television pulled into the yard. A reporter wearing heavy makeup and a vivid blue jacket hopped out of the passenger's seat. Lara watched in anger as the woman walked toward the front of the house.

Right after Chip's death, the
Douglas County Herald
and several area TV stations had tried to do stories on Susan. How did it feel to be an anti-war protester whose only son had died in the war? Susan had been upset by the question, by the microphone thrust in front of her face, and Jim had pulled her into the house, with a stern reproof to the reporters.

The sight of the woman striding toward the house made Lara burn hotly. What were they doing, getting a police report from Arnie on every move Susan made so they knew to the minute when she arrived home? Lara ran through the dining room to the front hall, shouting for her father.

She wrestled open the heavy door and glared at the woman. “Who are you and what do you want?”

“I'm Ashley Fornello with Channel 10 in Kansas City. I'd like to come in for a minute and talk to you about your special visitation.” She thrust out a hand and a wide smile.

“She's not a visitor. She lives here.”

The reporter's smile broadened, if that was possible. “Not visitor, honey,
visitation.
I understand she's very shy, but we wouldn't put a mike on her, and we'd film her with a remote camera.”

“That's creepy!” Lara said. “And you can't spy on her. It's against the law.”

Jim came up behind Lara and put a hand on her shoulder. “We don't have anything to say to reporters, miss, so why don't you just be on your way and let us keep on doing what we're doing.”

“But this is
news.
People will want to know about it. This kind of exposure could get you the attention you deserve.”

“I've had more attention than anyone deserves, miss,” Jim said. “What would help me most about now is peace and quiet. Come on, Lulu.”

“If you're not up to talking, I can understand that.” Ashley Fornello nodded sympathetically, her shoulder inside the open door. “If I promise to be
very
respectful, would you let me just take a peek inside the barn?”

“To see the combine?” Lara was bewildered.

After a startled moment, Jim gave a shout of laughter. “No, Lulu. She wants—I think she wants—well, you tell us what you're looking for, miss.”

“Aren't you Arnie Schapen?” Ashley Fornello asked.

“No, ma'am. You're on the wrong side of the tracks and then some. You go on south toward Highway 10. About half a mile up, you'll see a house on the left with a bunch of old cars in the yard. They'll be glad to help you.”

When he'd shut the door, Lara's eyes were round with wonder. “Dad, you sent her to Burtons'.”

“Clem deserves a little excitement,” Jim said. “Anyway, it'll do the lady good to work for her story. But how did she find out about Arnie's calf?”

“Oh, Dad, everyone in Douglas County knows. They were all talking about it in school yesterday, because Chris Greynard's dad was out on Thursday when, you know, they prayed to the calf, and so was Mr. Ruesselmann, so they all heard Nasya say this secret name of God. The men talked about it at home, so naturally Amber Ruesselmann brought the story to school. Of course, all she wanted was for everyone to look at her like she was something special. Then the women's group at Robbie's church—they meet on Friday—so Nanny Schapen talked about it there, although the other ladies knew already. It's not like the calf was a secret or anything before Thursday, but after that they couldn't keep the miracle to themselves.”

Jim put his hands on his daughter's shoulders. “It wasn't you? You swear you weren't responsible for spreading the news about what you overheard on Thursday?”

“No, Dad, honest. I—No!”

The events in the calf's enclosure were still too raw in Lara's mind for her to want to talk to anyone about them. She'd only told her father the vaguest details of what she'd seen on her second trip—it was all too horrible. Junior and Eddie in the middle of the cow's straw and manure, Eddie's sly laugh, got mixed in her head with her own shame at soiling her clothes so that she felt as though she'd somehow been part of that scene on the floor, the grunting, the cow bellowing, the filth of it all.

She'd been soothed only partially by Robbie's joy on seeing her emerge from the manger. He hadn't minded her clothes—Chip's clothes—covered in cow shit, or the dirt on her face, but clung to her, disbelieving his good fortune at seeing her emerge like this, Venus from an ocean of muck. His own misery at his brother's swagger, his father's unfair accusations, vanished as he held her. That swagger, those accusations, also made him ignore the strictures against women in the shed.

He helped Lara dig her cell phone out of the manger. While he dried off poor, sweaty Nasya, Lara filled the calf's water trough and helped Robbie replenish the manger. Then, just in the nick of time, before Arnie came back with a grudging approval of his work, Robbie smuggled Lara out of the enclosure the same way she'd come in—as soon as he could, while Junior was driving Eddie someplace else and Arnie and Myra went to bed, sneaking back out of his house and escorting Lara home across the sorghum field.

They hadn't discussed Junior and Eddie, beyond Robbie saying, “Sorry about my brother,” while Lara shivered and held on to him, despite her embarrassment over her clothes. They'd lingered in her yard only long enough to make a whispered date for Sunday afternoon before Lara ran inside and flung herself under the shower again.

Friday morning, when Jim went into her room to rouse her for school, Lara clung to him, her eyes sticky with tears she'd shed in her sleep. Jim couldn't get her to tell him exactly what she'd seen, but the details she did let out—Junior there with Eddie, getting the cow upset—alarmed him. He worried, too, about what Robbie might report to Arnie, despite Lara's belief that Robbie wouldn't say anything.

Jim cradled his daughter until the worst of her distress had passed. He wanted to take her into town, for a movie or a sundae, those cures for her childhood woes. Unfortunately, weather, equipment rental, and Susan's imminent return meant he had to make the corn harvest his priority.

He sent Lara to school, again with a note to excuse her tardiness—this time on account of the harvest—but told her she was to come straight home afterward. “Sugar, I hate to ask it, but I need you to help me clean out your mother's room.”

Later Friday morning, while Curly was at the far end of the field emptying the grain wagon into the big truck Jim rented for the harvest, Jim reported part of Lara's escapade to Blitz. “Trouble is, she went back for her damned phone after I fell asleep. She says Junior came out from Tonganoxie Bible and brought Eddie into the shed with him. She wouldn't say what they did, but—whatever they got up to, it shook her pretty hard.”

Blitz grunted. He knew, or at least suspected, Junior's relationship with Eddie, but he didn't talk about the things he knew or guessed, either on the farms or in the Lawrence schools. Curly picked up the most extraordinary details about people's private lives while working on his cousin's building projects; he happily shared them with everyone he met. As a result, Blitz kept his own counsel whenever he and Curly were together. Jim, of course, was the last to know ill of anyone, even Junior Schapen, so Blitz didn't embroider on the situation, just agreed it was more than a fifteen-year-old girl should have seen.

“Although if she'd paid attention to me to begin with and cut out this wretched habit she has of sneaking in on people, she wouldn't have seen whatever it was to begin with,” Jim added, exasperated.

Blitz only grunted again, but when Jim said he'd told Lara to clean up the mess Susan had left behind Blitz took matters into his own hands. He didn't say anything to Jim, but he didn't think a girl who'd just witnessed some pretty raw sex, with or without a heifer—given what he knew about Junior, neither would have surprised him—needed to be cleaning up after her mother. When he was alone in the combine, he called Rachel Carmody.

“I know you shouldn't try to bribe a teacher, ma'am,” he said, “but Susan Grellier is coming home tomorrow afternoon. Could I take you to that fancy French restaurant in Prairie Village if you'll organize some of your church ladies to clean out that bedroom tomorrow morning before Susan gets home? Grellier says he's siccing Lulu on it, but it's too big a job for a kid. I'd help, but we'll be in the field until midnight tonight getting the corn in and I'll be back on the combine tomorrow while Grellier's fetching Susan.”

Rachel had seen the room and she shared Blitz's unspoken commentary on the appropriateness of giving the job to Lara. She did a quick phone-around and on Saturday morning arrived with a team carrying brooms, buckets, and casseroles.

The women sent Lara into town to her band and basketball practice. They cleaned and did laundry. At eleven, when the men broke from harvesting for lunch, Jim carried the great pile of Susan's scribblings out to the yard and burned them. Blitz and Curly returned to the cornfield, but Jim went upstairs to shower and make himself tidy for his wife. As a last act, before driving into the hospital, he carried his ever-so-great-grandmother's diaries up the ladder to their tin trunk in the attic.

G
LOBAL
E
NTERTAINMENT WAS
merely the first of the news crews to ride out Saturday afternoon in search of the calf. CNN came next, followed by Fox and a stringer out of Kansas City for some of the Chicago and St. Louis papers. Most of them stopped at the Grelliers' for directions. Lara and Jim took turns answering the door and sending them on to the Burtons' to sink or swim as best they could.

A few sightseers were arriving, too, mostly area families who'd been hearing rumors of the calf for months, but a few from farther afield, picking up rumors out of the ether. Lara watched the parade from the family-room window. She tried to interest Susan in the drama, even telling her about the way the men had prayed to the calf on Thursday and showing her the pictures she'd taken with her cell phone. The old Susan would have objected as loudly as Jim about Lara trying to stir up gossip about the Schapens; the new, drugged Susan only nodded and said in a languid, uncaring voice, “How nice, Lara.”

“Mom! It wasn't nice; it was gross. First of all, I was covered in cowshi—cow poop, and, second, all these creepy guys were kneeling on these rocks and praying to the heifer. I bet when Moses came down from Sinai and found the children of Israel worshipping the golden calf, it was exactly like that, and the poor calf was crying for its mother, and—”

“Lara, can I see you a minute?” Jim took his daughter into the kitchen. “Sweetheart, I can see you're upset with how lethargic your mother is. I am, too. But don't poke at her as if she were an anthill. When she feels strong enough to start responding to us, she will. That's what the doctor says, anyway. And, in the meantime, we need to give her as much support as we can.”

“I'm trying to help her see there's a world outside her head! Why do I have to always be the one who's wrong? Why can't
she
be the one who's wrong?”

“It's not about right or wrong,” Jim said. “It's about what she's strong enough for. You're stronger than she is these days.”

“That's so unfair!” Lara cried and fled from the house.

Jim sighed and went back to the family room. He stood at the window, watching his daughter as she ran across the yard toward the road until the trees blocked her from his view. The knot of tension between his shoulders was so big he felt as though he had a basketball glued to his neck. Mute wife behind him, distraught daughter in front of him, him in the middle.

“I hope she's not going back to Schapens',” he said aloud, hoping Susan might respond, but she said nothing.

He turned to look at her, but she was pleating the plaid blanket he'd put across her lap. “I'm just going out to see—I—we can't afford her courting disaster with Arnie. Do you agree?”

“I don't know, Jim. I don't know anything, except I'm tired and my head is filled with fog. Please, let me go to bed.”

Jim wanted to burst into tears himself, but he said quietly, “Of course. Go on up to bed. I'll tuck you in after I check on Lulu.”

When he went outside, he found his daughter perched on an upper branch of the elm near the road, watching the people heading toward the Schapen place. He went back into the house long enough to fetch windbreakers for them both, then pulled himself up to the branch below hers, groaning out loud—the muscles he'd strained working out with Chip's weights last week had been further stressed by his stretch of sixteen-hour days in the fields.

“Hope you're not turning into an old man, Dad,” Lara said from the branch above him.

“Hope I'm not, too, Lulu. That'd make you about forty, way too old to still be living in a tree at home.”

Harmony restored between them, they watched together in silence. During the time Jim stayed with her, he figured at least twenty people passed them. Some came into his yard, hoping for directions, but Jim didn't feel like climbing down from the tree to help them, and Susan ignored the doorbell. He'd never been a tree climber as a boy, but he began to see why Lulu liked it. It was peaceful to sit suspended above the ground, even if the dust from the procession on the road below made him cough.

“How much do you reckon Arnie's charging folks for looking at his calf?” he asked.

“Do you think he would?” She was surprised.

“Stands to reason. He's been telling enough people that heifer was going to make his fortune. Unless he thinks he can sell her for some astronomical amount.”

“Dad, you know they plan to burn her.”

“You mean they're going through all this to have a barbecue?” He thought she was pulling his leg.

“No. Burn her up into ashes so she can be used in sacrifices, if the Jews rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem. It seems horrible, she's such a lonely, scared calf. How can Jesus want people to kill a calf?”

“Oh, baby, Jesus doesn't want us to hurt each other, let alone some poor heifer, but we seem to do it, anyway. When you think of all the people who've been slaughtered because someone told them God or Jesus or Allah wanted them to do it, it's enough to make a grown man cry. It's a good thing God is the one who's really in charge of our sorry lives, not all these priests and pastors and rabbis who think they know best.”

“I thought maybe I could rescue Nassie and hide her in the sunflower field,” Lara blurted.

“Lulu! Please, please un-think that thought. I can't even imagine what Arnie would do to you when he found her. And if you think you could keep her secret for thirty seconds around here, you've never listened to Curly share the news of the world.” He paused a moment, trying to keep his voice neutral, not wanting to accuse her of eavesdropping, “How do you know they want to burn her?”

“Robbie told me.”

“So you and he are starting to get along, even though he's a Schapen?” Jim quizzed her.

“He's not so bad. Not like Junior and their evil grandmother.”

Jim squeezed the leg that was dangling over the branch above him. “I'm going to go check on your mom. You stay out of trouble, okay?”

“I'm not going over to Schapens', if that's what you mean,” she said stiffly.

He stood up on his branch and hugged her, then swung to the ground, his trapezius protesting so that he couldn't keep back a bark of pain when he landed.

Back in the house, he went straight up the stairs so that he wouldn't have time to think, worry, dawdle. Susan was lying in bed, her breath short and shallow. Real sleep, he thought, kneeling next to her, not faking it in the hope he'd leave. He couldn't help patting the covers and the floor underneath for scraps of paper or a pen, but he didn't find anything, even when he stuck his hand between the box spring and mattress.

He knelt there, holding her hand, hoping she might wake up and smile at him. When she didn't stir, he found himself praying, not to Jesus but, as Lara had on Thursday, to his dead son. He didn't expect much help or understanding from the Lord. Maybe God had lost a son, like Pastor Albright had said, but Jesus didn't know anything about that kind of loss, didn't even know the grief Mary felt when she laid His own broken body in the tomb. Maybe Jesus knew about human sin and suffering, but He didn't know human grief: even when He wept over His dead friend Lazarus, the next second He brought Lazarus back to life.

“Give me a hand here, boy,” he said to Chip. “Your mother went off the deep end this past year. You were the heart and center of her life, so give me a hand now, pull her back to the country of the living. We'll all be with you soon enough. Help us make it through this time, son.”

He knelt so long that he lost all feeling in his legs. He lay flat on the bedroom floor, waiting for the numbness to wear off. He couldn't remember ever feeling this alone. Even the winter after Grandpa died, he had Gram and Chip and Susan. Now Gram and Chip were dead; and Susan, if she didn't return soon, he didn't know what he'd do.

Blitz had been working in the combine shed all afternoon, putting the combine to bed for the winter; Jim heard him give a couple of sharp honks, saying good-bye, as he drove out of the yard. A few minutes later, the back door banged: Lara coming back inside. That was one relief.

By and by, he got back to his feet and went downstairs to eat supper with his daughter. They took another one of the casseroles the church women had baked into the living room and watched reruns of
I Love Lucy
until bedtime. Jim lingered on the landing, but he finally went into his bedroom and climbed under the covers next to his wife. He lay there stiffly for a long time, listening to her breathing. But, finally, around one in the morning, he slipped into a fitful sleep.